20 Mar 15
The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to allow the
private Jesuit Loyola High School to teach its own course rather than Quebec’s
provincially mandated ethics and religious course is a rare victory for good
sense.
If true to its roots, the Loyola course is founded upon the
philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest philosophical mind since
Aristotle. The course on ethics and religion the Loyola students would
get would be vastly superior in rationality and content to anything founded
upon secularism offered by anyone, Quebec’s included. It would be
embarrassing to deliver the secular course after the students had been exposed
to Thomism – the students would tear secularism apart in the best Jesuit
tradition. Its message would be laughed out of the room on the basis of
its dogmatism and irrationality.
On the other hand, Catholic ethics simply cannot be taught
from a neutral perspective (if such a place exists) because Aquinas rationally
demonstrated those ethics in his works on natural law and ethics. It
makes no sense to speak of a neutral perspective on something that is
rationally demonstrated. One can choose to be rational and accept the
proof, or be irrational.
Secularism is rationally incoherent. Secularism is a
religion of anti-religion. The secular assertion that one religion is
pretty much of the same value as another is simply false on the basis of
Thomist analysis. And to say that because one religion has pretty much
the same value as another means that one ought to be tolerant of other
religions is a non-sequitor. Students in a Jesuit school would
quickly pick up on that.
The objective of the Quebec provincial course was to
inculcate the idea that other religions and ethical traditions were deserving
of respect and tolerance. It does so by laying down dogmatically the
secular notion of moral and ethical relativism. Thomists can reach a
conclusion approximating respect and tolerance without falling into the error,
as the secular course must, of saying that the ancient Hindu practice of
Suttee, and genital mutilation are things to be accepted rather than abhorred.
The worrisome part of the decision by the Supreme Court was
that the decision was rendered on the basis of freedom of religion. The
actual merits of the two courses were not the basis of the decision. The
decision would have been stronger had the Supreme Court judged on the merits of
the courses, and told Quebec officials that they were plain wrong and ought to
recur to stronger intellectual rigor.
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